Ten Years of Migration Only Does the U.K. Good

‘The Work Foundation”, a non-profit organization, has stated that large quantities of immigration into the UK has not affected the employment market in a negative way – what’s more it has done the world of good for the economy, with steady growth being a result directly attributable to the migrant influx. Further, interest rates and inflation have decreased, and shortages in the labour market have been filled. And more positively, unemployment among native-born Britons has not increased, and wages have not dropped, contrary to popular beliefs.

The study, ‘Myths: Employment Wages and Labour Market Performance' by David Coats, has dispelled many myths surrounding the increased levels of immigration. One bombshell is that if the skill set of migrants is different to the native-born population, the migrants can only compliment natives in the workforce, not compete against them.

This only causes a further rise in the economy. Coats explains this with a simple example, using hospitals: "Foreign doctors working in the NHS are obviously filling a gap created by a shortage of supply of British doctors, are clearly not willing to work for lower wages and are playing an important role in matching labour demand to labour supply. The NHS (and many other public services) would cease to function if labour supply pressures were not relieved by the availability of skilled professionals from abroad."

Many NHS doctors were brought in under the Highly Skilled Migrants Programme, which allows highly skilled professionals to live and work in the UK.

www.theworkfoundation.com